by Holly Webb
“It goes back really far! And I reckon it must go through to a hole or something up above, because there’s some light coming in further down.”
Ellie and Rascal followed him, slipping and scrambling over the rocks. Somehow when Max said there was light, it made Ellie feel better – she’d been scared of going into somewhere dark and eerie. Feeling a little bit silly, she stood hesitating at the entrance, but Rascal was keen to follow Max, and pulled on his lead. He obviously didn’t think the cave was scary.
“There might be treasure!” Max called back, and Ellie grinned. Max had been obsessed with pirates until a couple of years ago, and it looked like he hadn’t really grown out of it after all.
“Is it safe?” she shouted back, and Max snorted. “Of course it is! It would be fenced off if it wasn’t.”
Ellie nodded. That was probably true. She stepped into the dim, salty air of the cave, and followed Max, who was quite far ahead now. It wasn’t at all like she’d imagined – no slime dripping down the walls and definitely no skeletons. Just walls of crumbling greyish-brown rock. The sandy floor was covered in shells, swept in by the sea, and Ellie peered at them in the greyish light. She was sure that there were some kinds she’d never seen before, and she hunted through them eagerly. She’d found lots for Christy’s present, but she was sure that these were some of the nicest.
Ellie let Rascal off the lead. He sniffed around the cave, his paws scratching and scrabbling on the rocks, then returned to the entrance. He stood there for a few minutes, and then Ellie heard him whine. She looked up. “What’s the matter, Rascal?”
He whined again, staring out at the rocks. Ellie went to see what Rascal was looking at, and gasped. “Max! Max, quick! The tide’s coming in!”
Max dashed back down the cave, stumbling in the darkness, and looked out at the water lapping up around the rocks.
“What are we going to do?” Ellie cried.
“It’s OK, Ellie,” Max said calmly. “We can go back to the other end, and climb out through the hole. Hey, don’t be scared.”
Ellie nodded, and they hurried to the other end of the cave where a pile of rocks had fallen, leaving a big hole in the ceiling. “I’m not sure I can get up there with
Rascal,” Ellie said nervously, staring up at the tricky-looking climb.
Max frowned. “Maybe you’re right. Oh, well. We’ll just have to go for a paddle!”
It was all very well for Max to say that, Ellie realized as she watched him step out of the hole in the cliff and balance carefully on the nearest rock, but persuading Rascal was another matter entirely. He’d had quite enough of the sea this week. When Ellie clipped his lead back on, and prepared to make the wobbly scramble on to the rock, Rascal started to howl and wriggled backwards, trying to pull himself out of his collar.
“Rascal, come on!” Ellie coaxed.
“What’s the problem?” Max clambered back to them. “We need to hurry, or we’re going to get soaked.”
“I can’t make Rascal move!” Ellie told him. “He won’t budge.”
Max grabbed the puppy round the middle, and carried him, howling and wriggling, across the rocks. The water had risen up around them, so it was like hopping from one tiny island to another. They were just reaching the last of the rocks, when Ellie saw Gran and Lila hurrying down the beach towards them, waving.
“Are you all right?” Gran called. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you; we thought you must have gone along the cliff path at the top.”
“We found a cave,” Max yelled back. “We were inside, we didn’t see the tide coming in. Sorry, Gran!”
“You’ll have to wade across this last bit,” Lila called.
She and Gran were standing on the beach, between the cliff edge and the creeping tide. Lila pulled off her jewelled sandals, and started to walk through the water towards the rocks. It seemed to get deep awfully quickly – she was up to her knees, and she wasn’t even halfway to Max and Ellie.
Max looked round at Ellie, shouting over Rascal’s panicky howls. “Ellie, you have to just slip down the side of the rock. Feel for the sea bed with your feet, OK?”
Ellie nodded, and watched as Max wriggled down into the water – it was up to his waist! Rascal struggled in Max’s arms, howling, and then clawed his way up on to Max’s shoulder, where he sat draped round Max’s neck like a little furry scarf. She giggled. Poor Rascal. He really didn’t like the sea!
Ellie slid down the rock, and gasped as she landed in the cold water. “Shh, shh, Rascal!” she murmured – or she tried to, but her teeth were chattering. She reached out for Max’s hand, and they waded through the water to Lila.
“We were starting to get worried,” Gran told them, giving Ellie a hug as Lila helped her out of the water.
Ellie lifted Rascal off Max’s shoulders. He was whimpering miserably. “Not as worried as Rascal!”
Gran tickled Rascal’s ears. “Come on, poor little pup. This time I’ll actually give you a ham sandwich.”
Gran didn’t make a big fuss about Ellie and Max’s adventure to Mum and Dad, when they got back from their outing, although she did make the two of them promise to take more care with the tides. But at least Rascal seemed to be back in Gran’s good books again. She even let Ellie show off Rascal’s tricks to her while she was baking another of her lovely cakes – sitting, and staying, and not eating his dog treat until he was told.
“What a good dog! You can show him off to my friends from jigsaw club this afternoon, Ellie. They’re coming round for tea and cake. We’re working on a huge puzzle at the moment, two thousand pieces. But we’ve nearly finished it.”
Gran looked at Ellie thoughtfully. “You’d better go and change, dear. Those are the shorts you had on earlier, aren’t they? They’re looking a bit sandy.”
Ellie took the hint, and went upstairs to change into a skirt. She persuaded Max to change too, and Lila didn’t need any persuading. All three of them looked immaculate by the time the jigsaw ladies arrived – and Ellie had even brushed Rascal.
“Oh, isn’t he lovely?” all the ladies cooed, and Rascal sat under the dining table as they did their jigsaw, looking angelic and nibbling the pieces of cake that kept being handed down to him.
Ellie was curled up on the sofa, enjoying reading after their adventurous morning, when she noticed that the happy buzz of chatter round the jigsaw had stopped.
“I don’t understand it…” Gran murmured. “I rolled this jigsaw up in its special mat, and it’s been safe in the cupboard since last week. We simply can’t have lost a piece.”
Ellie put down her book, feeling worried. Things did tend to disappear when Rascal was around. She leaned over the arm of the sofa, and peered under the table.
Rascal came out to meet her, wagging his tail – and spat out something small and greyish. Something that might once have been the missing last piece of the two-thousand piece jigsaw…
“I’ve put him out in the garden, Gran,” Ellie said, in a small voice. “I’m very sorry…”
The jigsaw ladies had all gone home, leaving Gran crossly doing the washing up.
“We’ll go and buy a replacement jigsaw tomorrow.” Mum sounded really embarrassed. “Er, shall I make some tea?”
“I’d love some,” said Grandad, stepping through the kitchen door and wiping his muddy shoes on the mat.
Ellie went into the living room, to keep out of Gran’s way. Grandad put on a film for her, but Ellie couldn’t stop thinking about Rascal. Finally, she sneaked into the kitchen to go and play in the garden with him.
She closed the door carefully behind her and looked around the garden, expecting Rascal to come running over. But there was no joyful bark to greet her.
“Rascal!” Ellie called, and then a little louder. She searched the garden, starting to feel the tiniest bit worried. Still no puppy. She checked down the side path, to see if he’d gone round into the front. He couldn’t have jumped over the wall, could he? Gran had been very cross and told him
off. Could that have made him run away?
Ellie hurried down the path, then gasped in horror. The front gate was wide open, and the garden was empty!
Ellie dashed out on to the pavement, hoping to find Rascal doing something awful like digging up next door’s garden. She didn’t care what he was doing, as long as he was safe.
“Rascal! Rascal!” She looked down the street in both directions, but couldn’t see him at all. Trying not to cry, she raced back into the house, yelling for Mum and Dad, Lila and Max. “Rascal’s gone! The gate was open, and he’s disappeared! I can’t see him anywhere!”
Mum was sitting at the dining table, looking guiltily at the jigsaw, with its telltale missing piece. She jumped up, nearly upsetting her tea over the rest of the puzzle. “Oh no, Ellie, are you sure? He isn’t anywhere in the garden?”
“I’ve checked!” Ellie wailed. “Someone must have left the gate open. We have to go and find him!”
Dad was already at the front door, pulling on his shoes. “And his collar’s got our home number on, not the mobile. Come on, Ellie. Where would he have headed?”
Ellie followed him down the path, with Mum, Max, Lila and Gran and Grandpa hurrying after them.
“He likes the beach, doesn’t he, Ellie?” Grandpa suggested.
Ellie nodded. “But he loved it when we went shopping too – people kept stroking him. And that little girl gave him the end of her ice cream cone on the pier. He might have gone anywhere!”
“We’d better split up,” Dad said. “Ellie, you come with me, we’ll go to the beach. Max and Grandpa go and check the pier. Lila, you and Mum and Gran go along the high street.”
Ellie and Dad hurried down the street to the cliff steps. They could see a long way down the beach, but there was no Rascal rooting about in his favourite seaweed piles. It was hard to tell, though. There were so many people on the beach, with windbreaks, and even little tents. Rascal could be anywhere.
They hurried down the steps, and ran into the red-haired boys with the Westie at the bottom. “You haven’t seen my puppy, have you?” Ellie gasped out. “Rascal? My Jack Russell?”
The red-haired boys frowned. “No… Has he run off?We’ll keep an eye out for him.”
“Thanks!” Ellie called, hurrying away down the sand.
Dad and Ellie stopped lots of other people, but no one had seen a white dog with brown patches. It was odd how many people said things like, “Oh, the little Jack Russell puppy?” when they asked – Rascal seemed to have charmed everyone they’d met on their walks.
They ran along the beach, asking everyone they met. Ellie was running so fast she started to feel sick. And the smell of fish and chips wafting down from the top of the cliff only made her feel worse.
She stopped suddenly, grabbing Dad’s hand. “Fish and chips! I bet he’s gone to the fish and chip shop! I can smell it, and I bet he could too.”
She dashed over to the nearest steps, racing up them two at a time.
“Ellie!” It was Max and Grandpa, hurrying along the cliff path.
“He wasn’t at the pier then?” Ellie asked.
“No, but then we thought of the fish and chip shop. When I took him out yesterday before bed, he headed straight for it,” Max explained.
Ellie nodded. “We thought so too. Let’s go and see.”
“Oh, isn’t he cute? Look at him begging!”
“I wonder who he belongs to?”
Ellie could hear the cooing voices even before she saw Rascal, sitting next to a family at one of the tables, doing his best starving puppy face. “Rascal!” she cried.
He trotted towards her, and Ellie swept him up in her arms, laughing and crying all at once. “I thought we’d lost you!”
Rascal licked her enthusiastically, and he smelled of chips. Then he looked hopefully back at the table, obviously wondering if he could have more.
Ellie laughed into his fur as she saw Mum and Lila and Gran hurrying towards them. It looked like everyone had thought of Rascal and chips! “We’ll ask Mum, OK? Maybe a few. Just please don’t ever run off like that again, Rascal!”
Rascal wagged his tail, and Ellie was sure it was his way of saying sorry.
About the Author
Holly Webb started out as a children’s book editor, and wrote her first series for the publisher she worked for. She has been writing ever since, with over sixty books to her name. Holly lives in Berkshire, with her husband and three young sons. She has a pet cat called Marble, who is always nosying around when she’s trying to type on her laptop.
Copyright
ST RIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre,
189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2011 Illustrations copyright © Kate Pankhurst, 2011, 2012
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2012.
eISBN: 978–1–84715–285–5
The right of Holly Webb and Kate Pankhurst to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.stripespublishing.co.uk
For more information about Holly Webb visit: www.holly-webb.com
